


Far, far away (and hazy like a dream)

by TisNotButAPhaseMother



Category: Sanders Sides (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Angst with a Happy Ending, Depersonalization, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Mentions of Suicide, Panic Attacks, Spiraling
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-24
Updated: 2018-08-12
Packaged: 2019-05-27 18:47:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 14,253
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15030983
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TisNotButAPhaseMother/pseuds/TisNotButAPhaseMother
Summary: Virgil is feeling odd.Or maybe that's just how the world should be.





	1. Flowers on the window-glass

**Author's Note:**

> English is not my first language, and I typed this on my phone. Life is an adventure and I'm living it.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A prologue of sorts.

Virgil remembered winters when he was a child. They still had old windows from the plain glass back then, and when the weather outside would go from bitingly chilly to mercilessly freezing, those windows would completely ice over. Virgil remembered sitting in front of one such window and examining the flower-like patterns painted on it by frost in awe, unable to comprehend the meticulous beauty created by natural elements.

He remembered the cold lufts of air that seeped into his thin frame through the badly sealed wooden frames, and how the actual garden behind the icy one was distorted and blurry, completely overdrawn by the crystal flowers. It made the world outside into a hazy dream, a confusing illusion that was scary for its oddness.

Recently he's been recalling those memories, and how it felt to sit in front of that beautiful but distorting window-glass that blurred the real world beyond comprehension and left him feeling simultaneously cold, dazed and in awe. It was very similar to how he felt looking at the world now.

He's been getting lost, lately.

It wasn't something to write home about, really. He supposed that to some degree, it has always been there, albeit not so prominent as to actually adress it. He was always considered the odd one out, so him feeling as if he was an alien visiting a human body, talking to other people through the wall of liquid molases, wasn't recognizable as anything more than yet another sign of his general social ineptitude (and, at least in Virgil's eyes, stupidity).

For the same reason, he never talked about these odd phases with anyone, either. What was there to say? How would he explain it? Even as he only distantly pondered with the very idea, he felt his stomach roll with anxiety. Would anyone even understand? It was not exactly bad, he just... felt like he was dreaming while he was awake, sometimes. Like nothing made sense and people were talking a language that everybody but him understood. Like the world was very far away and he was alone, floating, cold and confused. 

Sometimes, it felt like he wasn't even there.

Or maybe he was just being dramatic. Maybe this was a perfectly mundane thing that everyone knew how to handle and he just had to be that special snowflake who blew the whole thing out of proportion. Maybe he was just being overly sensitive. 

Because it's not like anything bad was happening to him, not that he could name. He wasn't suffering. He wasn't in pain. The inability to comprehend one's sorroundings and interactions has to do with intelligence, right? That's called being dumb, not having a problem.

And so Virgil didn't have a problem. Virgil didn't have a problem at all. 

He was just lost inside his own head, feeling terribly alone and confused, sometimes.


	2. Hands and rain-clouds

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Or the one where not much talking happens (but the human interaction is peculiar, anyway).
> 
> TW: Mild panic-attack.

It wasn't the same as zoning out, he concluded as he tried to listen to his friend's chattering over breakfast. 

When he zoned out, it was different. Mainly, he didn't have to fight it. He wouldn't even be aware he did zone out until he would snap out of it, and after that everything would be clear again. Everything would make _sense_. 

The fork next to his hand glistened softly in the warm yellow light of the café. He absently noticed that his skin was very pale. He felt pale. It was as if pale suddenly became a feeling, encompassing his body into a state of constant fragility. He kept staring at his hand and it was as if it didn't even belong to him. It was just there. He sat, examining his fingers and tendons and wrist, feeling like he was seeing them for the very first time, borrowing the eyes of somebody else. 

He felt like a ghost. 

Yes, simply zoning out was different than this. This, he was very well aware of while it was happening, or as aware as he could be in his current state. He was especially aware of the fact that no matter what he did, he couldn't untangle himself from this hazy dream-like state of mind he's been lately slipping into. Everything felt muffled. Even his own body. 

He tried to move his fingers. They were very thin. He watched them slowly curl into a loose fist on the white tablecloth, felt the rough fabric rub against his skin, saw how his palm crinkled when he closed it. It was so distant and surreal, as if it took hours instead of two seconds. He felt drugged out of his mind. Was this normal? He wasn't sure, and with a muted pang of worry, he realized he didn't care much. 

Come to think of it, aside of a childish confusion, he didn't feel much of anything, lately. 

He consciously rose up to the surface again, or as close to it as he could. He realized he once more tuned out the chatter around himself, but even now he had trouble focusing on it. He glanced around the table and watched as the mouths moved and hands made gestures to accompany the sound the aforementioned mouths have created, but he didn't comprehend anything at all. It didn't make sense. None of it made sense. His chest constructed around nothing and a chill went down his torso, into his pale, pale fingers, rubbing against the rough tablecloth. The light was yellow, his friends were speaking, people around were chattering and it might rain later in the day. He dazedly wondered whether all of his friends had umbrellas with them, and thought about asking, but his mouth felt too distant and heavy and he was floating. 

"-rgil? Virgil?" 

The voice didn't exactly cut through. It merely made its presence known, as if somebody was tapping their finger on the aquarium full of water and Virgil was in it. Dull vibrations distorted by the many barriers between him and their source. 

There, but not with him. 

"Sorry, what was that?" He tried to look as present and inside of his body as he possibly could. Before, he would have smirked at the idea of being the ghost possessing someone's body, maybe even make a joke about it. Roman would probably think the characteristics of the poltergeist suited him quite well. 

It wasn't very easy. For some reason, he felt even dizzier and colder now that he tried to focus. The skin around his eyes felt tight. 

"We were asking if you were going to finish your coffee, kiddo. No rush, though!" Patton's skin was dotted with lightly colored freckles. They were everywhere, appearing in spatters across his arms, nose, cheeks and shoulders. His hips, chest, ankles and the underside of his knees too, from what Virgil remembered of those few times they went out to the beach together. 

He realized he was asked a question and forced his eyes to re-focus on Patton's face. The black rimming of his glasses underlined that one wrinkle that formed under the outer side of his eyes when he felt worried. Virgil wasn't sure when exactly he'd noticed this wrinkle, but the knowledge of its meaning didn't feel new to him. 

Perhaps when you are floating, things like worried wrinkles under your friend's eyes just suddenly start to make sense while everything else doesn't. 

"...sure. Yeah. Sorry." He more-or-less successfully morphed his lips and tongue around the words, and looked down at his half finished cup of coffee. His hand still laid next to it, still curled up into a loose fist. His fingers didn't look so thin like this, which he appreciated. The tablecloth seemed whiter, now - the lighting outside must have changed. It could be clouds shielding the sun, he concluded. Rain. It was supposed to rain. 

Roman loved getting rained on. He liked to get his shirt and hair drenched and reenact dramatic scenes from all the romantic movies he could remember, with them as involuntary co-actors. It made Logan embarrassed, Patton laugh and Virgil freak out about Roman catching a cold. (Which, to be fair, he usually did. But it made him smile and Virgil liked to see his friends smile ~~_and not thin, thin, thin_~~ and so he didn't lecture Roman _too_ much when he had to make a chicken soup and herbal tea later.)

Lifting his hand up, he curled his - now once more pale and thin ~~_so thin, barely there_~~ \- fingers around the mug and brought it to his lips. Pale, pale, pale. Pale was a feeling, a feeling of shatterable chilliness that prickled across his skin, painting it with ice flowers, leaving him numb and alienated from the rest of the world. The part of his mind that never actually grew up from the small kid gave a gentle wave through the distorting window to the people walking behind it, alone in this muffled, dimmed space inside his head. The coffee was luke-warm at this point and tasted horrible, but he let it pour through his lips anyway. He vaguely felt like a robot with an outdated, slow programming, having to consciously navigate every individual action. Swallow, lower your hand, put your pinkie finger under the bottom of the mug to stop it from making a clinking noise against the saucer, gently pull your pinkie out while setting the mug all the way down. The dragging of the porcelain against his skin was unpleasant, for some reason. He preferred the roughness of the tablecloth. 

He realized it was distinctly more silent around him than it was before Patton spoke to him, and looked up at the three faces sharing unsure, troubled glances between each other. 

Interaction, he thought. Conveying messages through non-verbal communication, based on the same cultural background and sharing of the same context, symbolics and general knowledge. The complexity that stood behind the simple ability to say "I'm worried" using merely one's facial features was baffling. Virgil felt humbled by societies workings just as much as he felt intimidated by them. 

They noticed him watching and with one last exchange of looks they seemed to come to a silent agreement. Roman's eyebrows were furrowed up in what might have been concern, but it also could have been a confusion. Logan, Virgil noted, similarly to Roman tended to mostly use his eyebrows to convey such emotions, although Roman's expressions were overall much more animated and pronounced. Patton's Worry Wrinkle was ever-present, and the rest of his face seemed to morph to accompany it. 

Virgil distantly thought of telling them about their individual ways of expressing anxiety, but decided it would take too much energy to explain. 

They were all turned in their chairs to face him now, Logan to his right, Patton to his left and Roman across the round diner table. He watched as Logan lifted his left hand - the one with the black wrist-watch on it, he noted, the black wrist-watch that always seemed to make Logan a tad more business-like and strict than he actually was, as if gentle nature was a visual flaw and punctuality was a make-up that helped covering it - and lightly placed it over one of Virgil's own. It looked thin again, thin, thin, thin, and his fingers were pale, pale, pale, only tips peeking from underneath their current coverage. Logan's fingers looked normal. Unshatterable. There. Solid and warm. He felt a surge of gratitude and a pang of anxiety at the same time. He was happy his friend seemed to be there and solid as ever, but that made him think of the scenario where he wouldn't be. What if Logan ever falls ill? What if Logan gets hurt? What if Logan gets hurt mentally and he will have to watch his friend wither away, unable to assist or help him? He nervously looked up, just as Logan took a breath to speak. He looked as present, calm and indestructible as ever. It made Virgil worry even more. What if Logan already is hurt, and he just wouldn't know because Logan always seems so put-together? Should he ask? Should he tell him he is there for him if anything bad ever happened? Does Logan know that? Maybe he should say that more. He always assumed it was, after all these years, a very well understood thing, but what if it wasn't? He should tell his friend he loves him more often, because god-dammit, he does. He feels it in this dream-like floating state so intensively as if it was the very thing keeping him off the ground, filling his lungs and coiling around his brain like the roots of an oaken tree. The state of confusion and loneliness does nothing to help defending him from this intensive surge of love and fear. It's the most he has felt in the past month, and yet he isn't any more anchored in the presence because of it. 

Logan speaks, and his skin is much healthier and more tanned than Virgil's, and his jaw has its familiar sharpness to it as it moves, and Virgil wonders how many times has he actually looked into Logan's eyes when he was directly spoken to, and how many times he's just rested his gaze on his glasses, or his nose, or his jawline. Suddenly he isn't very sure and lifts his eyes up to connect them with Logan's. 

"...came to our attention you haven't been, as Roman has phrased it, even remotely yourself, lately. At first, we wanted to give you time and space, hoping you would come to us on your own accord if something was seriously amiss, but it only seems to have gotten worse, and..." Logan seemed to hesitate for a second, as if he was rephrasing what he was about to say in his mind, before his eyes grew determined and he spoke once more, gentle but sure, always so sure: "And I am not going to ask whether everything is alright, because it very obviously isn't. So instead I'm asking for all of us: What's _wrong?_ " 

Logan's eyes were a dark shade of brown and it soothed him. They were warm and kind like the man himself, but sharp and intelligent at the same time. Logan's hand was still warm and resting over Virgil's, now rubbing subtle circles with his thumb into the back of his hand. He felt it as if there was a blanket between their limbs, but he felt it nonetheless. It was nice. There. Brown. Everything felt a soothing, warm shade of chestnut brown. The pale feeling lingered in the background, shunned away for the moment. It didn't even matter it was going to rain. 

"I'm fine, Lo," he felt his lips moving on an automaton. The sense of being a robot with an outdated programming came back. If he had a computer screen, it would be showing generated pop-up messages now. He heard a nasal exhale from across the table; the sentence was as empty as he felt, and the others obviously knew this too if Roman's frustrated crease of eyebrows was anything to go by. His eyes wrinkled at the corners when he was annoyed, but more up and even more towards the ear, not on the underside of the eye like when Patton was worried. There was also a subtle line forming around his nose completing his expression. He was however sure Roman wouldn't appreciate that notion. 

"Sorry if we don't really believe that, kiddo." Patton's voice was serious but soft, and an octave higher than when he normally spoke. He was subconsciously trying to be soothing. "You don't seem like you're fine. I've seen you when you were fine, and I've seen you when you were not, and I've seen you when you were really, really not. This is new. It isn't just your normal anxiety acting up, is it?" 

Feeling like his mind was filled with honey, he let his eyes slip from Patton's shoulder to where Roman's forearm was resting on the tablecloth, honestly taking a second to think about it. Has it been his normal anxiety acting up? He didn't know. It didn't feel right. He more or less bullied himself into a conclusion it was, and yet hearing it phrased by someone else made him doubtful again. He just didn't know. The whole point of talking himself into this belief was to make life a little bit easier for his friends, who were bound to try to help him the moment he said something was wrong (or more so than usual). That obviously didn't work. Roman was tapping his fingers, a tell-tale sign he was becoming nervous and/or frustrated, and Virgil tried to make his mind move to come to any conclusion that would be helpful at this moment. Roman's nails were short for once, as if he was biting them lately. Roman usually didn't do that. Has he missed something? Was he being a bad friend? 

"I don't... I don't think it is," he heard himself say. He felt numb and angry at himself at the same time. He was most probably just dramatizing something that didn't even matter. 

Patton sounded surprised and anxiously eager when he spoke, as if he didn't expect Virgil to actually confess anything and now was desperate to make him talk more. Roman's fingers stopped tapping. "Yeah? And do you know what it could be, kiddo?"

Virgil scrambled up the last bits of resolution he could find and dragged himself into his body by force. His eyes felt glazed over even now, and he was too aware of every motion of his head and hands. Focusing was exhausting and exposing himself to all of these senses made his stomach clench and his head spin. But Patton was worried and Patton deserved better than this. They all did.

He took a small breath to speak, but he faltered when he found himself at the complete loss of words. 

He was used to being at the loss of words because he didn't want to tell the truth, and he was used to being at the loss of words because he was flustered. This was, just as Patton said, new. He wanted to be honest, as he often tried to be with Patton - he wanted to encourage his friend to do the same about his emotions. He could feel that honesty swelling up inside him, like a physical thing instinctively pouring out of his heart, ready to push past his lungs and throat and lips, but he had no words to release it with. 

"It's, uh..." He mentally kicked himself and tried once more. "Not- It's just that. I-" 

His voice wavered. There must be some way to soothe Patton's worries, right? Ho looked up at him, noticing for the first time that Patton had bags under his eyes, as if he hadn't been sleeping well for a few days now. His eyes were very blue, boring into his with silent encouragement. He felt his breath hitch. Some way. This wasn't anything big. He once more remembered his own pondering about his recent state, and the conclusion he had decidedly come to: This wasn't anything big. It would pass. It would pass soon. He was just too sensitive or- something. Too sensitive. Roman's fingers were tapping full force now. Resting his eyes on him for a split second, he noted that Roman, too, looked a bit worse for wear. It wasn't anything big, but it was _there_ \- in the way his usually graceful posture was a bit crumpled and he was slightly leaning forward in an awkward angle, his sleeves rolled up a bit more messily than usual, his hair just this bit too tousled for it to be an intentional styling decision. It wasn't anything big, but it was there. Just like Virgil's recent haze. Nothing big, just there. It was hard to think, and he had to soothe their worries and explain that he would be fine in his own time.

"...I... I'm just-lately I've been-"

It wasn't happening. He realized it as he felt his eyes well up with tears and his chest fill with guilt and panic. He just couldn't voice it out. This shouldn't be so impossible. He spoke this past month, he spoke _today_ , they have all been there for it. He knew how to speak, yet at the moment it felt like he never even learned how to do so. His wide eyes slipped from Patton's _~~worried, always worried~~_ face and turned their panic filled gaze to Logan, who was watching him with an expression Virgil was unable to grasp at the moment. 

"Virgil?" He felt Logan's hand tighten around his and tried to ground himself on it. Everything around him was hazy once more. He took a few stuttering breaths while trying to blink away the panicked tears attempting to fall down. He didn't understand this - one moment he is a thousand light years away from any sense of sharper emotion, the other he is literally drowning in them. 

"Virge, it's okay. Breathe, yeah? Would you like to go outside? We've all finished with our meals, so it won't be a bother, don't worry." 

He nodded. He didn't want to go outside _~~where it was going to rain, rain, rain, did they all have umbrellas?~~_ , but he didn't want to stay sitting down, either. As he felt rather than comprehended Logan gently tugging him by his hand up and out of the small diner, the other hand resting reassuringly on his shoulder, he thought that maybe what he really needed was for something to just give and restart.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Being stuck inside your mind can feel like you are high, sometimes. Figures. 
> 
> I also realize that Roman didn't get much of a spotlight as of yet. Actually, it's been a bit of an 'Ode to Logan, the Glorious Nerd' so far. I see my terrible excluding crimes and they shall be hopefully remedied with the forthcoming chapters. 
> 
> Thank you for reading all the way to here, I wish you a great day. <3


	3. Gashes and the wordless stories

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Roman cares, Patton is good, Logan has a heart and Virgil tries his best. 
> 
> TW: Panic attacks, spiraling, curse words, implied/referenced suicide.

They sat on a bench by the concrete-paved gash in the ground filled with rushing water that the city-hall presented as a creek, the damp-smelling air filling their lungs. The clouds above their heads have long changed from their morning softness to the stormy grey and despite it being almost noon, the sun was nowhere to be seen, the temperature outside dropping considerably. Nobody seemed to mind much, though, and Virgil found himself rather enjoying the cold. Once more, his body felt detached from everything around him, but the crispy air was refreshing. 

Since he has calmed down enough to breathe again, nobody said anything. Patton sat pressed firmly against his side, with hands absentmindedly rubbing his own forearms as he was likely freezing in his thin blue polo and light cotton shorts. It was strange how the roles have switched; now that Virgil was mostly numb to the world again, he didn't feel half as cold on the outside as he probably should. 

Or maybe he's just gotten used to it. 

Logan, on the other hand, willing to suffer the highest of temperatures of the oncoming summer as long as it meant he wouldn't have to step down from his usual formal attire, seemed to be just fine, sitting on Virgil's left with one of his arms lightly draped over the younger man's shoulders. His other hand stayed connected with Virgil's, keeping the bodily contact between them limited to their limbs but still there and warm. Virgil knew Logan did this primarily to ground him and he felt another tired surge of affection towards his friends. Honestly, they deserved so much more than that, but his emotional energy for the day seemed to be spent. 

Roman was pacing now, restlessly migrating from leaning against the railing lacing the edge of the artificial brook to leaning against the street lantern next to the bench, his jittery movements and wandering gaze contrasting with his causal posture. Virgil wanted to comfort his friend, ashamed he was most certainly the cause of his distress, but simply didn't know how. His mind wasn't working properly, and this confused, detached feeling came back full-force. Should he hug him? He didn't feel like hugging anyone, so that wouldn't be honest. Should he say something? He wasn't sure what, it would probably lack substance. Was Roman mad at him? Would he get mad if he asked? He remembered Roman's short bitten nails and briefly let his eyes wander over his friend in worry. At least he didn't seem to be freezing, he thought dazedly. He wasn't dressed ideally for this type of weather, either, but compared to Patton he was doing great. 

Virgil didn't realize he was pulling the zipper of his hoodie down and shrugging the fabric off of his shoulders before he was halfway through the motion, and when he did, it didn't even make him pause. He seemed to be surviving on an autopilot, these days. For once, he didn't mind letting his body do whatever it wanted; it required less pushing to be present and therefore resulted in less dizziness and emotional turmoils. 

He turned to a confused Patton who had to lean back from his position to allow the action, and wordlessly wrapped the hoodie around his shoulders before turning back and stilling once more, returning to his blank gazing at the water. Without his hoodie he felt even thinner. Something coiled around his stomach that made him feel as if his insides were made of glass that was about to shatter, and he ignored it. His skin prickled with ice flowers, and he ignored those, too. This morning he woke up and felt nothing. Now he still felt nothing, but his edges were cracked and the ledge was nearer, it seemed. 

"Kiddo- you don't have to do that! I'm fine, and you're gonna catch a cold like this!" 

Patton's voice was tender, cautious and still an octave higher than normal. Virgil gave a single timid shake of his head, not turning his eyes from the creek. Grey bubbling water sounded like a static to his ears, washing over his brain. "You're cold, and I have thicker clothes." His own quiet voice merged with the water, a vibrating hum through the wall of molasses.

There was a soft cough to his left. The hand holding his lifted momentarily before returning back, and he didn't have to look to know that Logan have adjusted his glasses. A nervous tick, a chase for stability and the reassurance of propriety he sought whenever he found himself unsure of how to proceed. 

Virgil tried to imagine Logan as a kid. Tried to think of the many impossible things that have had to align into a constellation of one life to make Logan the person he is now. He knew of some. He knew Logan's parents were strict, and that they didn't think being good at language was admirable but they wanted Logan to excel in it anyway. He knew Logan had a bow-tie when he was three that had chemical formulas on it, and that he could recite the whole periodic table at the age of seven, and that he hated mushrooms but if need be, he would eat them anyway, because being a picky eater was wasteful, impolite and most of all, illogical. 

"Patton is right, Virgil. Like this, you are not much better dressed for the current temperature than he is," came Logan's words through the grey water and static. Virgil's thoughts were like deep-dwelling fish, slowly swimming around in the unknown indecipherable dark world under the surface. 

He also knew that Logan loved geometry, but it was a love he had to fight hard to keep in his heart since his parents' focus on his math grades made it anything but an enjoyable subject for him. 

He also had a feeling that Logan generally wasn't allowed to not know something as a child, or be confused much. 

In this aspect at least, Virgil was certainly spoiled rotten. 

"I feel the need to remind you that you are wearing ripped jeans and a shirt." The environmentalist's voice have grown slightly exasperated by the end of the sentence. He cared. His sweet, confused Logan who wasn't allowed to be confused when he was a kid and had a hard time admitting to it now. Sweet, caring Logan. Kind, loving Patton. Courageous, loyal Roman. 

Virgil thought of speaking, and realized he was exhausted. How was he to explain to them what he thought and felt? His friends were important, so his friends needed to stay warm. How was that not simple to grasp? Logan was supposed to be the smart one of the group. Plus, Virgil felt cold all the time now, and his hoodie wasn't helping when the cold came from the inside. 

Even if it magically was helping, which it wasn't, he would still give it to Patton and make up some dumb excuse; like it feeling too tight around his body and needing it off of him for a bit. It worked the last time, at least. 

Saying any of that right now would require a heroic amount of strength, though, and only thinking of phrasing it all made Virgil's head spin. He didn't know how to explain all of this. Half of it, he didn't even posses in the form of a coherent thought. It was mostly strings of words tied together with fleeting emotions and visuals that made sense probably only to him, playing in front of his mind's eye like a too saturated silent grotesque movie. 

"I don't feel cold, though," he settled on in the end. It was technically true. He didn't feel any _colder_. "And Pat does." 

"Fucking-" The sound of Roman's angry steps signaled he once again left his spot at the lantern and moved to the railing. He came into Virgil's view, running fingers through his - now definitely tousled beyond repair - hair, and glowered at the trio on the bench. On a good day, his expression might have scared Virgil. Right now he was just too distracted by that familiar line forming alongside his nose and the way his crispy white shirt stood up against the dirty blue-grey depths of the water behind him and the clouds above. The painting of Shakespeare's ill-fated Ophelia popped up at the forefront of his mind, white dress bloating up above the water surface, the flowers haphazardly lacing her body as she slowly drowned _~~pale pale pale so crazed in her mind and thin, the flowers like ice and the water like storm~~_ , singing broken melodies and smiling at the sky. 

The image changed from a smiling girl's face into Roman's, and the dread and resentment towards the very idea flooded him. He violently pushed the scenery away.

"Roman-" "No. Shut up." Logan's soft, warning voice was cut off harshly, and Virgil felt him minutely flinch back. He wouldn't notice it had he not been basically pressed shoulder to shoulder with Logan. He looked up to see Roman standing directly in front of him, only about three feet of distance between them now. His hands were balled to fists by his sides and he gazed down at Virgil with an expression he wasn't able to read. 

"Shut up, Logan, because I am done waiting. I don't care what the plan was, because I won't- I won't have this anymore. We all know something is wrong. Virgil even _said_ something is wrong, and- and when does he ever do that?! You both. Have. Been. There. For. It. And- and Patton even said, he said-" He ran his fingers through his hair again in an angry motion, and his breath shook. "Patton even said, we saw you when you were not fine, and when you were really, really not fine, and this isn't it. This isn't it! I've known you for years, Virgil, but I don't know... this! And I am sick of pretending nothing is wrong and waiting for you to come around and tell us on your own because that's obviously not happening and this isn't normal and you are withering away in front of our eyes and- and I just-" 

With a dulled surge of panic Virgil realized Roman sounded less angry and more like he was about to cry now. 

"And I can't do this anymore. I can't, I can't wait like this. I know, Logan, I _know_ ," his voice took a rough edge now and the man in question, gripping Virgil's hand tightly now, has locked eyes with Roman's, unsure brown mixing with the desperate hazel, "I know we've agreed we're gonna give Virge some space, and I know we've agreed not to crowd him. I know all that! But what's the, what's the fucking _point_ if it's only gonna get worse?? You don't- we don't even know what's happening! Virge, we don't know what's happening to you, and it- it terrifies me, okay? Before, when it was 'just' your anxiety, there was... it sucked, it sucked for you, and it sucked for us because we knew it sucked for you, but we've known what that was, and we could do our dumb shit and feel great about ourselves because you would be so easily touched every time and- with this, we, we don't! We don't know... that. And so, so," Roman paused to catch his breath and swallow, eyes momentarily fleeting to the pavement. "So, the only conclusion I can come up with is that something else than your mental health is up, or that you're r-ready to end it, or something. And I've read about- I mean, Logan even looked it up, just in case, he studied like every article on how to prevent the, the- we just. Is it, is it that? Or is it physical? Are you ill? Is it something with your family, or is- is there somebody I need to beat up?" His voice cracked and the next breath he took sounded suspiciously like a sob. " _Please_ , tell me that there's somebody you need me to beat up, because- because I will, Virge, for you, I totally will. I will mess up an army of assholes who are making your life difficult if it will solve it. I would rather have to mess up an army of assholes if it meant there is something to be done about this, and that it's not- that you're not gonna l-leave, because that's what it lo-looks like, you know. I just- I just can't go another day where you don't laugh, and don't even frown, and don't really look like you feel anything at all, and where you don't smile at Patton's jokes or snark me back or ch-chatter with Lo-Logan. You didn't even- I can't go another day like this, wh-where you don't talk and look so fucking... lost. So- so tell me what to do? Because I don't know, Virge, a-and, and I feel so fucking us-useless, and I'm scared." 

Roman was crying. He didn't even try to hide it anymore, he just dejectedly wiped at his eyes as he turned his gaze back to the ground. His shoulders shook, and for the first time in the five years they knew each other, Roman looked absolutely and utterly hopeless. Roman was crying, because Roman thought Virgil was getting hurt. Roman was crying because he was scared Virgil wanted to leave. And the problem was, Virgil never felt very sure about staying, even at his happiest, because the world has always made him feel so small, small, small _~~inadequate and thin, pale, lost, as if he had misplaced a map that everybody else owned since birth~~_ but that wasn't anything new, and it wasn't the cause of this, and Roman wouldn't know that because he never told him, he never told _them_ so they wouldn't worry, ~~_because it was so hard to explain how one can live 24 years of their life simply not wanting to live much but hanging in there for whichever reason anyway_~~ and now they were getting it all wrong and it was his fault, his fault, _his fault_. 

Virgil didn't realize he was shaking violently and holding his breath until Patton firmly wrapped his arms around him, soothingly running them up and down his back, chest and shoulders, hurriedly whispering sweet nothings into his hair. Going by the silent sniffles and the tightness in his hushed voice, Virgil could assume Patton was crying, too. Logan's hand has never left his own and he now found himself clenching on it, probably painfully so, not able to control the spasms going through his hand as his body became utterly and completely frigid. The ice flowers that were originally only decorating his skin now pierced through with sharp, merciless frozen crystals, clawing into his blood-stream and insides and making him almost double over in the freezing agony that swallowed his whole body, constricting his lungs and tearing at his heart and stomach with icy blades. Everything around was blurry, and he could hardly see anything - once again he was a tiny kid, curled in his mom's giant knitted sweater in front of the window that was now completely white with ice. His nose, head and lungs were filled with the heavy scent of mint his mom used to grow in her garden, dry in the sun and then put into closets between their clothes. She said it scared off moths, but Virgil knew she also simply loved mint a lot. 

To this day mint had the power to make him feel safe and small and loved, but for many years now it also held a bitter melancholy taste to it that would never really go away. 

Did he ever talk about that? No, there was no-one to talk about it with. Wait... wait, there is, now. His friends. He could tell them about his mom, someday. He didn't know why it suddenly felt so important to him to tell them why he liked mint, but it was. It was a memory of his mom, and he loved his mom, and she deserved to be mentioned at least once. No? Yes. 

Did he still have that sweater? He thought so. He also had a small mint plant in the pot on his window. 

He should tell his friends. They have told him so many things, after all, with words or without. Virgil makes sure to remember all of them. Or he tries, at least. He tries, because somebody has to. Patton is better at that, though. He's better at keeping the things that are important. Not the worry wrinkles and wrist-watches and frustrated lines alongside noses. Patton is good. He has a sprinkling of freckles on the back of his neck that looks like the map of Galapagos Islands, he likes his tea better without milk in it, he owns a pair of blue rain-boots with white polka-dots on them and he's Good. 

His thoughts are silver-bellied fish glacially floating around his mind and he watches them from somewhere not above and not beneath but perfectly in-between, shallow enough to still see the flashing rays of light descending from the surface, but deep enough to resign on fighting to reach them. 

It's peaceful, down here. Zero-gravity experience that devours his body and leaves him blissfully, helplessly afloat, finally free of struggle. The sound of static is almost silent. 

Outside of him, it starts to rain.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This came out way more emotional and cheesy than I thought it would. 
> 
> I am giving myself a medal for participation and am off to drown my doubts in the bathtub filled with coffee.


	4. Empty frames and deep-rooted voices

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Something happens, but nothing happens. And then nothing happens some more, and it's most peculiar. 
> 
> Also, sometimes the only thing you can actually do is to wait. 
> 
> TW: A rather copious amount of suicidal thoughts in this chapter, although not graphic. Self-deprecation.

Consciousness came to him slowly. Although he obviously just slept, he felt exhausted, and his eyes felt salty and swollen with eyelids basically glued together, as if he went to bed crying. Already a great start to a new... day? Afternoon?

He pried his eyes open to check and a wave of disorientation hit him. It was pitch-dark outside, and the air in the room felt humid and terribly warm. When did he go to sleep? What time was it?

Dizzily lifting himself up on his elbows, he found that not one, but two blankets were draped over him, completed by a purple decorative comforter from his living room. To top it all off, he was apparently fully dressed, sans his hoodie and shoes.

A panic made its presence known via stab in his stomach. How did he get here? Who tucked him in? Why? What day was it? What did he do yesterday? He felt like he was drugged. Was he drugged? His head and heart pounded and he realized he was horribly thirsty, as if he either partied or cried for days. Maybe both.

He looked around the unbearably stuffy room in a daze and his eyes fell on his phone, keys and wallet, laying on his bedside table. A small wave of relief flooded him. Should he call someone? Maybe one of the others? They could know what-

Upon remembering his friends, his brain finally provided him with a memory of the previous events, and his heavy breathing momentarily stopped.

_Fuck._

He has made a scene. He went and made a scene in the middle of the restaurant, and then... then...

Logan's hand around his shoulders. Patton's sneakers in his line of vision. Princey pacing. The feeling of guilt. Water rushing. _Princey telling Logan to shut up._ What? Princey crying. _He made Princey tell Logan to shut up. He made his friends fight._ Patton's arms around his shoulders, Patton sniffling. He made his friends cry. _What was wrong with him??_ His hand clenching on Logan's and... and...

He checked back into the present to try and calm his erratic breathing. It will be fine. It will be okay. He will talk to them- _Nothing is fine, you made Roman and Logan fight._ He can apologize, explain, make them mad at him instead- _Explain how?_ That he... that he didn't mean to do it. To make them worry so much. To make them think that he actually had a problem. To make Roman say... say... _...that he would fight for you. They all were worried sick for you, and they lost sleep over you, and you made Logan research on suicide just because you can't grow up and deal with your feelings like everyone else. You know what you are, Virgil? An attention whore. You don't have a problem, you are just a spoiled kid who wants to be the main topic of their friend's lives every fucking day._ He didn't want the attention, though! He tried- _You could have tried harder. Maybe you should have actually killed yourself._

Stopping his mind from jumping into this particular void of despair, he tried to focus on his breathing. Breathe in for four. It's going to be fine. Hold for seven. He will talk to everyone, let them know he is just a spoiled kid. Breathe out for eight. If he explains, Logan won't be angry at Roman for telling him to shut up. Breathe in. He will get mad at him instead, they all most likely will, and Virgil will take it like a man for once. Anything for his friends to be in harmony. Hold. He will let them know he's sorry, and that he will try his best to get better. That he will somehow try more. Breathe out. That he will try and become a better person, and won't ever bother them with his problems again. Four. He will not expose them to his mental health issues, however small, not even once. He can learn how to be cheerful, how to adjust his generally gloomy demeanor, and if it gets too bad, he is entirely willing to - seven- to leave the picture until he sorts himself out. Until he is _good_ again. He can learn how to be.... healthy around them. If not in his mind, at least on the outside. Eight. He can learn that. He will, he will promise them he will, and he will actually do it. Four.

_But won't that hurt Pat, though? He already has problems with admitting when he's feeling down. Even acting cheerful, you will be toxic for him, giving him a bad example._

Okay, okay, hold on. In for four. What would Logan do? Think like Logan, be rational. _Logan is mad at you, exhausted because of you, and was told to shut up by one of his best friends._ Hold for seven. Yes, for Patton's well-being, that could be a problem, and he's going to solve that. He's going to solve that with... with...

_You can't._

He felt fresh tears prickle at his eyes, and he was so tired and hot and desperate, but he had to think of something to make this all better. To fix this. There had to be a way.

_The only way you will stop being toxic for them is if you either become a new person overnight, which you can't, or if you leave them alone completely._

He can't do that. They already thought he's going to do that when he wasn't, and they lost sleep over it.

_Once you're gone, they won't have a reason to worry anymore. It will hurt for a bit, but it will be good for them long-term._

No, wait. No. He wasn't here to search for escapes, he was here to find a healthy solution for his friends. A compensation for their troubles of sorts, because they obviously cared, so cutting them out of his life and isolating himself without having a conversation with them first would actually solve nothing. He can avoid being toxic to Patton, if he... if he presents it as a self-helping journey. Yes! If he explains to Patton that the reason he is such a bad person is because he relies too much on them, and therefore in his case, dealing with his own problems is actually needed. Patton is the exact opposite and should learn how to share more, because he's never toxic and always helpful. Not talking about his problems anymore is good for Virgil, because it will make him... independent. Yes, good word. _Independent_ , and in turn, he will stop being toxic for his friends. In the end, everybody wins. At least when it comes to his friend's mental health. He realistically knows that none of this will actually help him, but that was never the point. He'll just have to be a better actor from now on. He can do that.

Maybe he doesn't have to lose them after all. If they will be willing to listen to him and forgive him enough to give him a second chance as their friend, that is.

_And what if you will lose them anyway? Where is the point then?_

There isn't any. If he loses them, then he can give up. He can stop trying. They are the biggest family he had ever had, and the only he had in years. Even if they don't know it, they are the closest people to him in more than a decade. Somehow, he managed to lay off of them enough that they haven't realized there's nobody else, so far. It took a lot of self-control and backtracking (was he texting too much? Was he inviting them over and accepting invites too much? Was he too eager to do things with them all the time? What if they wanted to go just the three of them, for once? Was he overwhelming them?) and a bit of careful avoidance around the subject of birthdays, Christmases and Thanks-givings, but at least he wasn't lying. At first, he didn't want them to pity him or feel obliged to talk to him just because he was alone. Later, he didn't want them to think about him on holidays, when they were supposed to be carefree, visiting their families and celebrating. And even later he just couldn't find any good way to bring it up in a conversation.

He seemed to be having this particular problem a lot.  
  
He shyly told his mom about them, though, when he visited her to light up a candle for the thirteenth anniversary of her death, and he spent a good two hours excitedly blabbering about them on the fourteenth. On the fifteenth, he brought a photo of the whole group visiting the water park and felt a bit foolish, but immediately has decided that how he talks to his mom is his problem, and just in case she's listening to all his rambling, he better also provide some visuals. (Logan took even more time to convince to go to the water park than himself, and the only reason he tagged along in the end was because Virgil desperately pointed out that he alone can't do CPR on two half-drowned idiots at once.)

On the sixteenth he ended up crying, because he choked out his first and only coming out to a cold tombstone in the middle of an empty graveyard and he didn't know if it even mattered at all.

On the seventeenth anniversary he talked about his mint plant, and how he was thinking about sending one of his works to a publisher, and how so far his writings were doing well online and he was actually thinking of writing a funny story in which Roman is a powerful warrior, Patton is a fair prince he needs to save from the terrible curse, and Logan is an alchemist in the pursuit of a greater knowledge who joins forces with Roman along the way. They travel far and wide, proudly defeating many enemies with Roman's might and overcoming plentiful obstacles with Logan's wit, only to find out that Patton has by some hilarious accident managed to save himself and now is happily having his own adventure god-knows-where, ending up saving both Roman and Logan in the end.

He technically didn't put himself into the story, but Patton did have a little sparrow for a friend from his imprisonment with the witch who kept him company and later joined him on his journey through the land, and Virgil liked to think he could be that sparrow. That he could dare to project this little bit of himself into a happy story about blossoming love, friendship, respect and bravery, to be a tiny, insignificant part of it all, although secretly and without a word to say.

The story currently rested half-finished and a little over two hundred pages long in the depths of his computer and he planned on finishing it and giving it as a crack-gift to all of them on Christmas. He had proper gifts planned besides this one so that they wouldn't be disappointed, but he hoped it would at the very least make them smile.

So... no. There wasn't anything to do should he ever lose them. Even though he wholeheartedly loved Remy and got recently friendlier with Dee, these three were his family. And if there was one thing in the world he knew he couldn't bear, it was losing all of his loved ones again.

_So you will throw the responsibility for your suicide on their shoulders for deciding to leave you? Make them feel guilty about doing what was best for them?_

No, no he won't. He will give it some time. There won't be anywhere to rush if he loses them, right? He won't make them feel responsible for this. Maybe he could move out, get lost in the world, so when he actually gets around to stop existing, his friends won't hear about it, even by an accident. They will just think he simply... moved out to forget, or something.

_And this isn't escapism?_

It is, but not the sort that would hurt his friends. Not the sort where he runs away from difficult conversations and even harder solutions and where he denies them closure. Not the sort where he wouldn't even try.

He felt serenely calm now. His heart was still beating fast with anxiety, the perspective of the oncoming conversation with his friends gripping his heart in a cold fist, but his breathing has returned back to normal as he sat on his bed, staring right ahead, gripping his sheets. He had a plan now. He had what to present to them as a solution. He might not be able to live up to his own promises - sure. He might not be able to get better, but that wasn't the point after all, was it? He will try to not be a burden. And if it doesn't solve anything... well, there is always a plan B.

More exhausted than he could ever remember being, with head pounding and ears buzzing, but finally awake and breathing properly, he took a look around his room. It was still dark, with only a nightlight illuminating the corner of the room, and for the first time Virgil realized there was a sound completing the insistent white static.

The rain was finally falling behind his windows, and he still felt disoriented and dazed, and the air in the room was stale and hot, but it made everything feel a bit better, anyway.

✼ •• ┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈ •• ✼

"Should I go check on him?" "Patton, you have been there five times in the past two hours. I think it best to let Virgil sleep for the time being." "But what if he needs me??" "As if he would tell us if he did."

Patton shot Roman his perfectly practiced Stern Dad look. "Roman! You know Virge didn't mean to do anything to-"

"Yes, yes, of course I know!" Roman threw his hands up, whisper-screaming as to not wake up the graphomaniac in question, who was supposedly still sleeping off today's two panic-attacks in his bedroom. "I know! Doesn't mean it can't frustrate me!"

Patton's eyes softened. "Of course it doesn't, kiddo. I feel ya. It would be good for V. to share his problems, sometimes. But we will get there, yeah? We will have a nice chat about it and let him know what friends are for and that he is loved and can turn to us at any moment."

Roman deflated while he talked, and was currently tiredly leaning against the kitchen counter, his hands in his pockets as to stop himself from furthermore nail-biting. Honestly, these past few weeks have been hell for his usual attire. And if you thought his attire was wrecked, you should have seen his poor heart.

"How does he not know that, though? He never let's me help with _anything_ , at least not really, and he never talks about anything ailing him without prompting, either. I mean, we are basically family. That's what family is for, right??"

"Maybe," Patton said slowly, pausing to glance over his shoulder to check if the living room was still empty before quieting his voice even more. "Maybe his family just isn't very close, and so he wouldn't know it can work like that. Like a support system. The poor kiddo seems really set on solving his problems on his own, and I can't actually remember him talking about any of his relatives."

Roman frowned. Now that Patton mentioned it, he couldn't remember Virgil ever talking about his family, either.

"That's a... peculiar notion, Patton." Logan, for once, looked just as confused and abashed as Roman felt. "I admit I have never paused to think about it, but now that you have brought this possibility to light, I am realizing I have never seen any family photos in this home. Of course it is possible that Virgil is simply the kind of person who doesn't like photos, but then I have no explanation for all of the photos of the four of us displayed in the living room."

They fell silent, thinking of the overwhelming amount of information and even bigger amount of questions they have collected in one day. After a while, Roman pushed away from the kitchen counter, stretched his back and began to causally walk to the living room.

"Kiddo?" Patton's soft call stopped Roman mid-step. He turned his head sheepishly. "Yes?"

Patton's tone of voice was gentle and kind, as if he was reasoning with a distressed animal. "You have checked this whole house for intruders, hidden foes and secret abusive boyfriends about five times. I don't think we will find out anything new until he wakes up and tells us in his own pace, Ro."

Roman blushed, uncertainly hovering in the door-frame. "I know that, logically, but I just-" His fingers twitched as his gaze wandered to the corridor and back, clearly restless with the anxious need to do _something_. He sighed deeply, letting some of that frustrated energy out. "You know..."

"I know, kiddo. Me too." Patton's eyes were warm and understanding as he stepped up to Roman, gently placing his hand on his bicep, running it up and down soothingly. "Me too, but we can't do anything right now, other than wait and talk later. And I know you are worried, but you can be worried after you take a nap, too, no?"

Roman quietly laughed at that, squeezing Patton in a hug. "The voice of reason as always, Padre."

The affronted cough from the kitchen table made them both laugh some more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was supposed to be longer, but then it was shorter, and I thought "You know what, sometimes short is good, look at Robert Downey Jr." And so... here we are. 
> 
> I hope you enjoyed!


	5. Euripides, Christopher Robin, and a monster

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everyone gets spooked, Virgil can't seem to catch a break, and Patton tells a story. 
> 
> TW: Panic attacks, implied/referenced monsters under the bed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Or, the one in which I have realized I have started to write the whole story in the middle of a culminating plot and there is no "toning down the drama" button involved anymore.

A few years ago, when he was just starting his freshman year at college, Virgil was going through his shitty horror novel phase. He collected cheap, worn-out paperbacks with an almost religious interest, spending nearly all of his free time outside of school and work lost in the yellow pages smelling of naphthalene, finding a strange source of inspiration in the cliches and tastelessly gruesome plot-lines. Sometimes, the books would be so absurdly _bad_ that he could not predict the outcome of the story at all, and those moments filled him with something most reminiscent of a childish glee. 

The side-effect of this hobby, he has soon found out, were the monsters. 

Virgil was many things; anxious? Always. Paranoid? Often. Overprotective? Terribly so. But he never thought himself the type to be afraid of the dark, or at least, for many years now he did not. The world, after all, was very much the same at night as it was during the day, as his mother has always reminded him. It was the people misusing said night to do bad things that were dangerous, and Virgil has learned fairly early on that he was far too busy being afraid of such people to have any fear left for the monsters in the closet. 

Those months five years back, though, as he was laying wide awake in his shabby room that hardly fit his bed and a tiny cabinet, leaving barely any space between the two to walk, he had to reconsider his stances. The room was so small it could never fit any kind of a writing desk, meaning he had to do all of his work on an old kneading board that he would lay over the bed while kneeling in front of it on the floor, turning it into an impromptu kneeling work table. When he was done, he would take the heavy kneading board, slip it into a space between the head of the bed and a wall, and leave it there until the next time he was forced to do his schoolwork at home. Safe to say, neither he nor his knees were ever looking forward to the occasion.

And in that tiny room, on his bed that was also his desk and a free-time zone (provided he ever _had_ any free time) and that had absolutely no space under it left because it doubled as a storage room for his many books, notepads, a box of cleaning supplies and a shitty suitcase filled with official documents and his more important possessions, he caught himself thinking: _What if there is a monster under my bed?_

When the full nature of his situation dawned on him, a startled giggle tore its way out of his throat. It carried through the night too loud and too abandoned for his comfort and he promptly clamped a hand over his mouth, but he felt a sour sense of amusement nonetheless. Here he was, losing precious sleep over a monster under his bed when he could hardly fit on said bed himself. Virgil didn't want to imagine a beast that could fit under there - the last thing he needed in his life was to start feeling pity for the monsters that didn't even exist. 

As he allowed his hand slip from his lips down onto his pillow, a silent amused exhale left him and he turned to lay on his back, staring at the ceiling. Right. No monsters under the bed, here. Monsters under beds were a luxury only those with actual rooms and decent living spaces could afford.

It would be a horribly dusty monster, anyway.

Calm now and only slightly embarrassed, he sat up, swinging his legs over the side of the bed. It was cold outside, but his room was on the sixth floor meaning all of the heat rising from the flats below was warming it up further, and he was thirsty. There was a fridge in the communal kitchen he shared with other five people, and unless one of his neighbors has decided to make his life difficult again, there should still be a cold bottle of water marked "V. T." that he purposefully refilled the evening prior.

It was only when he was stood right at the door (it took him one step from his bed to get there, and he's gotten called some version of _shorty_ more times in his life than he's gotten called by his actual name), his slim hand clutched around the door-handle, that he heard it. A soft, almost inaudible sound of creaking, right on the other side. 

It wasn't the sound of steps, though. The reason why Virgil's heart picked up its rate was that the creaking appeared to be the sort the wooden floor in the hallway would make if one stood in the same spot for too long, straining the boards. 

And that spot was right in front of his door. 

Virgil strained his ears to try and hear over the sound of blood rushing into his head. Now he was _sure_ he could also hear quiet breathing accompanying the irregular creaks. His heart beat madly in his chest as he tried to think. What were they waiting for? What did they want? Were they just about to enter his room while he supposedly slept when they heard him get up? Were they now also listening, trying to determine whether he went back to sleep? The thought made his stomach churn with a fear-induced nausea. There was no way he was going back to sleep now. Staying in his room quietly, waiting for whatever will come, wasn't an option. His door had a lock, but it was a bad one, ridiculously easy to unlock if someone was determined enough. And this person didn't seem to be leaving. 

Virgil felt tears prick at his eyes, and he was immediately angry with himself. When he was alone, it was terribly easy for him to tear up, as if it was his body's only go to for any negative emotion in existence. Yet, he couldn't help it - he felt so terribly helpless at the moment. Calling the police would be pointless since he had nothing to actually tell them, aside from _'I can hear creaking floorboards in the shared five-bedroom apartment and it scares me, please, come quickly'_. And even if the police wouldn't immediately hang up on him, the person on the other side of the door would hear. They would either get in to shut him up or run away before he could even stutter out his situation into the phone. So police was out of question ( _for now_ , his mind had unhelpfully supplied). He had no friends to call over, and his family was long gone. 

He was alone in this. It was just him and whatever was on the other side of that door. 

Some part of his brain realized he has stopped calling it "someone" and instead started thinking of it as "it", but in his panicked haze, he wasn't able to rationalize his thoughts. The Thing lost it's non-descriptive human features and turned into a Monster. One with nails like shards from the broken beer-bottle, uneven canine-like teeth, wide, maniacal smile on its face and round, crazed, unblinking eyes. 

A minute had passed since he's first noticed the creaks, and his breath was coming in irregular puffs that he desperately tried to mute in the deafening silence. If he wasn't sure he heard breathing before, he was very, very sure _now_ , and although some part of him knew it was impossible, the creaks now sounded impatient; _annoyed_. As if The Thing was getting tired of waiting and was moments way from stretching out its crooked, gaunt, inhumanly long fingers and trying the doorknob. He would feel it move under his sweaty palm, unable to hold it in place, and it would slowly turn all the way around until he'd hear a menacing, victorious _'Click!'_ as the lock would obediently give way. It would be silent for a second, the doorknob still, and it would be heavy with anticipation, heavy with something ominous, the rattling breath in The Thing's throat stilling just for a moment in vicious excitement. And he would feel it, the grin coming from the creature behind the door, he would feel the meaning of that silence; _I'm coming for you. I know now for sure that you are there, trapped on the other side, and I am coming for you. The way is free now, and I have waited for a long time. I am coming in. Knock. Knock._

He wasn't even breathing anymore, his lungs convulsing uselessly in his chest as fear-scented sweat trickled down the back of his neck, into his tank-top. In the maddening buzz of panic in his head, he was distantly aware of it trickling from his armpits and down his temples, too, the familiar stench of stress filling the air, choking him further. 

His hand trembled violently on the doorknob, slick with terror and completely powerless, and the heart in his chest was now a frantic war-drum, deafening him, turning everything into a whirlwind of buzzing, creaking and screeching, as the doorknob-

He saw it move. 

His eyes told him sooner than his touch did. He watched in a terrified fascination as the doorknob turned, and turned, and turned, slowly, just as he imagined a split-second ago, under his damp hand. In the calmer state of mind, he would notice his throat was emitting soft, high-pitched, barely audible wheezing - like an animal scared out of its mind trying to whine in fright and failing. But he wasn't in the calmer state of mind, and his hand refused to clutch around the doorknob, and the air smelled of rot, stale warmth and terror, and he couldn't breathe, _he couldn't breathe_ and now the doorknob was completely turned and- 

Stopped. 

There was a second. And then two. And then three. All of them filled to the brim with Virgil's terrified wheezes, his heart thumping so strong it physically made his ribs bulge out in a gore-like manner, and with the grin of something that knew it didn't have to wait anymore. 

And then, the doorknob slipped out of his rigid fingers, and the door swung open into the corridor in one unhurried, fluid motion, revealing the pitch-black behind it and rows and rows of floorboards, stretching like an ocean of rotten wood from Virgil's room into the impenetrable darkness.

And amidst the clouds of crazed panic, constricted lungs and frozen heart, Virgil has finally found his voice. And screamed. 

✼ •• ┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈ •• ✼

The piercing scream that tore through the night made Roman sit up abruptly on the couch as his brain attempted to even comprehend the sound while at the same moment Logan dropped his phone. It's edge crashed into a tabletop with a loud _'Crack!'_ , that however seemed almost embarrassingly unimpressive in the deafening silence that followed the guttural scream.

A second in which the confusion and shock passed over, and then both men were scrambling from their seats and out of the living room door into the hallway. 

✼ •• ┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈ •• ✼

It has turned out, back in those glorious days of freshman struggles and cheap horror-novels, that The Thing was, in fact, a human. It wasn't that much better, given the human was his rather robust neighbor who Virgil has never found out what he wanted to do once he'd get into his bedroom (his mind could easily come up with a few ideas, but he made himself push these into a tiny box and stomp on it, lest he'd never sleep in the shared living spaces again), but his scream was luckily enough to not only make the guy fall backwards and scramble away a few steps, but it also alerted the rest of his neighbors who promptly barged into the corridor, enraged about being woken up in such a manner. Normally, that would be Virgil's nightmare, but that night he felt only relief.

It served as a good enough prompt for the guy to get up and back away, uttering begrudged explanations about accidents and 'fucking whiny cowards', before he disappeared into his own room. Virgil, too shaken to even think about going to the kitchen now, and even through his relief feeling intimidated by the shouting people in the corridor, has shakily apologized before closing his door again, this time locking it, as much as he found the action futile before. It didn't make the shouting stop, but at least he wasn't humiliating himself by putting his freely falling tears on a public display. 

The next day, he went and bought a run-down chair in the bazaar. Not for sitting, because he had no table to sit at. Every evening, he would ram it under the doorknob. Even if it wouldn't keep anyone out for long, it would hopefully wake him up if someone tried to intrude again. 

Not that he slept much, after. In the following months, he worked himself to the bone, just so he could move out as soon as possible.

The Incident Number IX, as he called it in his mind (it deserved a place on The Incident list, if only for the fact that it has made him move out even though he basically had to starve himself so that he'd be able to afford to do so), didn't technically end up in anything _bad_. Nobody was injured, and nothing has actually happened to him - thanks to his irrational fear of monsters, thirst in the middle of the night and some creaky floorboards. Still, a bad aftertaste have permanently settled somewhere deep within him. A looming shadow of what might have happened, making sure he would always recall the memory and the feeling of utter helpless terror in a vivid detail. 

Falling backwards to the floor away from his current bedroom door with a scream still shredding his throat to pieces, in his own apartment with supposedly no-one who could intrude so easily, he's been enveloped by a definitive sense of déjà vu, as well as a thought that whatever was on the other side of _this_ door sure was patient. 

He didn't even hear the floorboards creak.

✼ •• ┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈ •• ✼

They have busted into the hallway catching corners, their socked feet sliding on the smooth floor. There, Virgil's bedroom door rested completely open, and on the floor in the door-frame knelt Patton, surrounded by water and broken glass, wide-eyed and profoundly whispering apologies and reassurements to the shadows in the room. His shaking hands were outstretched in a desperate, placating gesture, and as Logan followed their direction, his eyes found Virgil. Like Patton, he was also on the floor, albeit more as if he had fallen rather than sat down, and Logan immediately took note of the violent trembling that seemed to be swallowing his whole body. His back was smashed into the side of his bed, spasming fingers gripping along the carpet as he gasped for breath. His face held an expression of an unmasked horror, and it flashed through Logan's mind that this is the most alive he had seen Virgil look in _weeks_ , all the while his terrified eyes seemed to gaze straight through Patton and at things that weren't actually there. Gone. 

For the whole of five seconds Logan hated himself. He hated himself, because seeing Virgil like this brought a part of him a sick sense of relief coming from the fact that he knew _this_ \- he knew this Virgil, and he knew this part of his struggles, and they have dealt with this before at least once, and Virgil still looked far away but he also looked positively _alive_. Fighting to breath and frightened, but alive. 

Logan minutely shivered with self-loathing and promptly shunned the relieved sensation away, feeling like a monster. Nobody should be ever this scared; least of all one of his closest friends. Least of all the one who is obviously currently going through some troubles and doesn't deserve even more stress and panic on top of them, just because Logan would like their problems to be easier for himself to handle.

"Shh, shhh, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. It's okay, Virge, you're okay. It's just me. I'm sorry I have scared you, I should have knocked. I'm so sorry, kiddo, please, look at me. Look. It's just me, Pat, it's me and it's all okay." Patton's frantic whispers and Virgil's heavy gasps for air, combined with his and Roman's rapid breathing, were the only sounds filling the silence that still somewhat rang and rippled with the scream that so brutally tore them out of their peaceful time-passing. Logan's stomach dully ached as if he had swallowed shards of glass from the way it crumpled inwards with unexpected rush of panic, and a quick glance at Roman confirmed that he wasn't fairing much better. His eyes were almost comically wide, his breath barely starting to even out from when it stopped completely on his mad dash for the hallway. 

"Patton, what - what was that?? What happened?" Even as Roman asked those questions, eyes flying between the two of them in search for answers, his voice was already lowered to a half-whisper and he was absentmindedly crouching down next to Patton as to not loom over the duo. Said man seemed to be on the verge of crying with stress, and he didn't turn his head as he made a brief pause in his whispers to explain. "I wanted to give kiddo some water, so I opened the door - and I didn't knock because I thought Virge might be still sleeping, a-and Virge was just on the other side of the door so it s-spooked him badly, and he already had two attacks today, and I didn't mean for this, and-" He took a shaky breath, looking pretty much on the brink of a panic attack himself. "Sorry, kiddo, I'm really sorry, but- it's just me and the boys. See? It's Ro, and Lo, and me. No-one else. No danger. Please, breathe."

Virgil didn't breathe. He obviously tried, but he didn't seem to hear what Patton was saying at all, his cramped posture rigid, eyes feverish and staring madly past their forms at something only he could see. 

Logan's legs moved without his permission, completing a half step towards Virgil, his subconscious itching to reach him, to help, to reason their way through this - before he forcefully stopped and with a look at Virgil's uncomprehending gaze reminded himself that they are way past the levels of panic attack where the touch or logical reasoning would help. What Patton was doing was probably the best solution there was, for now, and no matter how much he ached to come closer, to be there, to do _something_ \- the best thing he could actually do right now was to wait, try to not cage Virgil in and be ready at hand. 

Two's a party but three is a crowd, after all, and one voice was more soothing than a number of them. A supporting presence of Roman, who was currently rubbing soothing circles into Patton's back as he continued his attempts at bringing Virgil back from whichever place his mind ran to in moments like this, was enough. 

He made himself say that in his mind on repeat as he turned around, his movements deliberately slow and steps soft as to not be startle Virgil any further, and walked off into the kitchen to fetch a fresh glass of water and a rag. 

✼ •• ┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈┈ •• ✼

With a sense of bewilderment, Virgil found himself thinking about apple trees. 

He wasn't sure why, but now that he became aware of it, there were full strings of sentences in his head, putting together a broken story. A pieces of it were missing where the fog overlapped and his brain lost focus. 

With no little amount of effort, he tried to pay attention. What was he thinking about? Climbing, he was thinking of... 

"...broke, like, completely gone. So now Lucy is standing under the tree in her Sunday dress, laughing her head off, and I am hanging from the top branches dressed in a yellow dress-shirt, shorts with blue suspenders and polished shoes like a super clumsy version of Christopher Robin - which she kept calling me for years after that, by the way, I kinda liked the nickname! - but instead of a nice teddy bear I apparently have an angry cat named Euripides. Euripides who is _still_ stuck in the tree, now more scared then ever, and screeching at me. I was heartbroken, Virge! I wanted to save it so bad, and maybe impress my cute friend, and instead I made an utter fool out of myself and the cat didn't even appreciate my effort. Oh, and I was about to fall from a ten meters tall apple tree. Which in my head at the time translated as a fall for my early grave, considering I was eleven. I didn't even know apple trees could be this _big_."

The words fluidly emerged from a muffled, static-filled hum into a refreshing clarity, like a giant whale slowly breaking the ocean surface, and in the same motion Virgil realized it wasn't his voice recalling the story in his head, but Patton's. It kept coming from somewhere short distance away from him, soft and a bit strained, but familiarly animated. It was comforting to hear.

"...climbed up to take the cat, church dress-shoes and all, because she didn't trust me to not drop it on my way down, I was shaking so badly. She wrapped it in that green flowery shawl of hers like a little baby so it wouldn't claw her eyes out - the poor thing was so scared, I felt so guilty! - and _then_ we victoriously took it to Mrs. Kowalski. We felt like heroes, well- Lucy did. I just felt like a complete doofus. That sweet girl even presented the story as if the two of us had saved Euripides together, instead of her having to save me _and_ Euripides. I thought it was the most badass thing I have ever seen anyone do, I was smitten! She had some nasty scratches on her face, too, the cat didn't really want to go into that shawl, and I thought she looked like a superhero with a green cape..." 

He didn't see anything, and it was a bit hard to breathe. As he listened and he gradually became more mindful of his own body and the position he was in, he realized it was because he was tightly curled up on the floor, his side presumably leaning into the frame of his bed, with hands pressing over his face and furthermore hid in his knees. 

Slowly, he tried to loosen up his posture and uncurl a bit. He allowed his knees to partially lean away from his covered face, his stiff spine straightening ever so slightly from its bent position. 

"...have photos somewhere- Virge? ...Virge, honey, are you with me?" 

Virgil didn't dare to talk just yet, or remove his hands from his face. They were now sufficiently covering his eyes, nose and mouth, and it was strangely calming. As if he didn't have to face the world just yet. As if it added him this tiniest bit of time to adjust to it first. 

He's decided to try and relax the muscles in his stomach and torso next, further uncurling from the crumpled ball he have smashed himself into at some point of the day. It must have been quite some time since he did, too, if his aching back and screaming tendons were any indication.

He carefully checked the state of his own brain. He was relatively calm, now, albeit a bit disoriented - he felt tired, and tense, and stuffy, and his head felt like it would be spinning if he opened his eyes, but all things considered, he was doing good. He could breathe and Virgil has always been taught to count his blessings. 

"Virge? Sweetie? Do you hear me?" 

His back was mostly straight now, with legs loosely bent, but not slammed into his chest like a minute ago. He took a deep breath to brace himself and let his hands limply fall from his face, cracking his eyes open. When he noted it was dark in the room, he allowed his eyes to open fully - they burned and his eyelids felt horribly swollen - and lifted his head up to take a look at his surroundings. 

Due to his head spinning, his first intake wasn't too coherent, making everything into a blur of grey, brown, purple and yellow. The object his gaze first fell on was a black round speaker on his dresser, and he had to blink several times to chase away the myriad of little black circles suddenly swarming his still unfocused vision. 

The second attempt was a bit more successful, and he actually managed to land his gaze on Patton, who was for now a blurry silhouette of a sitting human in his doorway, illuminated from behind with what Virgil assumed was a living room light. 

"Hey, Virge," the Shape said tenderly, with softness and hopefulness that spoke volumes of love hid behind those two words, and Virgil blinked again to try and give its figure some details. "Are you here, hun?" 

Virgil opened his mouth, closed it, quietly cleared his throat and tried once more. "Yeah," his voice was weak and raspy, as if he was battling a horrible case of flu, and cracked in the middle of a one syllable word, but he was too tired to bring himself to care about what he sounded like. "Hi, Pat. Good story. Are you still friends?" 

The Shape let out a relieved, breathy laugh, and shifted a bit in its spot. Virgil wouldn't be able to tell _how_ , though, seeing all of the Shape's limbs were still just a part of a homogeneous black blob to him. "You're such a sweetheart! Yeah, I don't know, to be honest... I haven't seen her for years, since we went to different colleges. I wonder what she's doing now." 

Virgil swallowed to get rid of some of the disgusting stale layer of _sheer despair and mud_ in his mouth, then said: "Probably a hardcore marine. Either that, or she is a super chill dark overlord with her own political twitter and a weird, alternative fan-base. One of those two things." 

It wasn't his best quip of all times, but Patton, sweet, shiny Patton, has giggled as if it was the funniest pun he has heard this year. The Shape that also had arms now has wiped something from under its eyes before it looked up at Virgil again.

"You're right, you know. I wouldn't be surprised. How do you feel, love?"

Virgil finally took note of two shadows hovering just outside of his door-frame, trying and failing to subtly peer into the room from the hallway, and his heart warmed at the same time his stomach went cold with a frigid, yet steady wave of realization of what he still had to do. The panic was, amazingly enough, almost completely dull and muted. He felt more or less numb now, or rather - he felt tired. He felt tired, and so, so very ready to finally change _something about this_ , to finally do something _good_ \- even if it meant having the conversation that could potentially start the very beginning of his own personal end. 

Still, he gave Patton a smile. An exhausted one, but honest, because in the end, the most important thing in the world was that he loved them. And he would act accordingly, whatever it might mean for him.

"Actually," he rasped out, clearing his throat gently. His stomach was cold, and his heart clenched, but there was also a burst of resolute energy blooming in his chest. The kind that enveloped his lungs and let him know that whatever it was that was so crucial, he would see it through, however scared he might be of the outcome. It was the same energy he felt when he applied for college and was getting ready to live completely alone in a big city at the age of seventeen; the same one he felt when he was walking up to the coffin to see his mother's face for the very last time. A terribly cliche white rose that he didn't pick clutched in his tiny hand so hard he could still recall where exactly the thorns had dug into his skin.

"Actually," he repeated, voice more or less steady, "that's what I wanted to talk to you guys about."


End file.
